Omar Rizwan

In retrospect…

I was probably a little dumb when I tied this blog directly to my real name. I could at least have put in some thin veil of a pseudonym to make me feel better about posting. It’s Tumblr etiquette, anyway (this really isn’t a real Tumblr, though).

(The root of the problem is that I haven’t had a clear mission for this blog…)

But I’m not dead. Actually, a lot of cool stuff has happened, but you’ll just have to ask me, because there’s no way I’m writing it all out after 8 months.

All right, I don’t want this post to be a complete mopefest.

Here’s one project my friend Vince and I are working on (in our endless spare time):

Yep, it’s a Game Boy emulator. We barely knew anything about how computers work when we started, so it’s been a fun learning experience. 

I’ll post the source and some binary for some platform (it’s written in Java, for what that’s worth) once there’s a compelling reason to use it. That might take a few more weeks, so if you want to see the work-in-progress (i.e. ‘bad’) code, just ask one of us.

More cool stuff is coming!

It’s live!

Today we’re pushing live a complete rewrite of the Khan Academy Exercise framework (live demo).

A big push at Khan Academy has been to write more-and-more exercises for students to practice with. Naturally, to increase the number of exercises that we have, we needed to make it easier for team members, and casual committers, to write them.

http://ejohn.org/blog/khan-exercise-rewrite/

starbucksspelling:

Omar

9 notes

Things I should have blogged about

I hate to be this guy, but.. yeah. I feel guilty, and certain people are bugging me (ahem) to post more. Actually, I’m not even in California at the moment. I’m back in NJ right now, sort of (for GSET). Sorry ;(

(Side note: I tallied up my summer a few weeks ago, and I figured out that I’d spend less than a week actually sleeping in my own bed in my parents’ house. Adventure!)

So here’s a brief bullet-point overview of some of the stuff I neglected to post about for the last six weeks (not in any coherent order):

• Visiting the Stanford campus and playing bocce ball on the lawn
• What I actually do at work (develop a new practice framework for Khan Academy and accompanying exercises in loads of different topics)
• The presentation we interns did a few weeks ago on what we actually do at work
• Learning how to solder and making a cute doodad at Maker Faire
• Tons of new people at work!
• All the new stuff Khan Academy is releasing (new API, new design, new exercises, new videos)
• Coming back to NJ and adjusting to home again
• Sal on the Colbert Report
• Why board games are awesome
• What I’ve been reading (and my super-weird habits with video games)
• Our projects and stuff at gov school (or maybe that should be a surprise?)

More to come (for real, this time!)

Reach for the sky

We decided to add a little self-expression to our normally stodgy and presentable office (just kidding) today.

First, we got a label maker. It can print labels.

We kind of went crazy on the labeling. Totoro:

Me:

We also got office helicopters. According to the box, this model is “the world’s best flying helicopter.”

We had a little trouble getting the batteries in at first, since we didn’t have a screwdriver. Luckily, we did have labels.

I flew one around until the battery sputtered out. I think I crashed about fifteen times, but the helicopters are still working!

A bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet

First day at the office today! It’s been pretty great so far. I finally met (most of) the team. We’re moving super-quickly and getting a lot of cool work done, even though we’re a small (yet awesome) group.

Like everything else, the office situation is changing quickly. Some of us have had to resort to desperate measures just to survive:

http://missmarcialee.com/2011/05/ergonomic/

Anyway, things are getting fun. There may be actual photographs (of me!) on the next post.

In the beginning

Hey, all!

I decided to start a blog this summer, now that I could have interesting things to talk about.

For now, I’ll be writing about my experiences as a summer intern for Khan Academy. I’ll also throw in some general bloggy/tumbly stuff as a bonus.

I’ve just gotten settled in my apartment in Mountain View, so I don’t have a whole lot to say. More interesting stuff will come, I promise.